Pillow smelled sweet still

Bed was sandy

Walked down the pier, which is this big, long sllab of stone, saw sun setting while plicking guitar for the flock of gentleladies whose husbands had gone off to fetch their automobiles.

Gentle ladies, with teh different flavors of lipstick and spritzy hairdos

The one nearest me, the sweetest one, who half-whispered "sing louder," as if we were a band of theives and it was timely imperative that we steal this moment before we got caught.  Made sure to catch eyes with her just once between the sky and the inky horizon which was Lake Michigan and my fingers feel-finding for chords, as she was singing along, and do you know what she said?

Why, "Don't saaay no; it's the eeend of the world..."

Well that's how she sang it, too.

And then it was over and I saw how she'd been looking at me, like a mama cat on a lifeboat in the middle of teh ocean, crying for home, the faint crinkle of sincerity in the brow, eyes filling up with something I don't think I'm old enough to identify, and she said, "one more."

I did "Wagon Wheel," and this time they were all of them paying attention and they couldn't tell when I mixed up the words, and if I'd remembered I could even have said, "Like a fire in the rain," because that's what I am.  But i wasn't thinking of it and I used Dylan's original, "Wind and the rain," and it must have been okay because now they were all crinkled and sincere and the one at the end of the row to my way left said, "You have a beautiful voice," and again with the eyes, only hers painted darker and her hair the same red my gypsy grandmother uses.

They were gone before I knew it even though it hadn't set yet, not for another 4 minutes or so, and it was still up in the air.